How to Get Involved

One nice aspect of working here is that a lot of people genuinely want to be part of the Tucson Weekly. I constantly get questions from people wanting to get involved; here are some answers to those questions.

• Do you accept work from freelancers? Yes; actually, most of the writing contained herein is done by freelancers. We rarely assign work to freelancers (especially writers we don't know), but we're always willing to entertain story pitches. Send a résumé and clips/writing samples with that first pitch so we can see what you can do. A caveat: We say no to pitches far more than we say yes, especially if we're unfamiliar with your work; after all, we already have a great group of freelancers who have been writing for us for years. Therefore, don't get discouraged if we say no once or twice or 10 times.

As for freelance photography and illustrating ... the same goes (just replace "writing samples" with "work samples"); however, instead of sending that stuff to me, send it to Adam Kurtz, the art director, at akurtz@azbiz.com.

• Are you looking for interns? We usually have one to three interns on duty here at Weekly World Central. However, since our internships are mostly unpaid--we do throw interns a pittance for published writing outside of our City Week section--they have to be done for some sort of school credit.

• How do you pick your Guest Commentaries? We sort through the best submitted commentaries and/or pitches for commentaries and run the ones we think will be of the most interest to our readers. Got a commentary, or an idea for one? My e-mail address is linked to the tiny envelope next to my byline above.